Turks and Greeks: Understanding Themselves and Each Other

Book Review of Vamık Volkan and Norman Itzkowitz, Turks and Greeks: Neighbors in Conflict, Huntingdon, England: Eothen Press, 1994. Softbound, $27.75.

My Turkish grandmother used to tell me stories from the War of Independence (1918-1923) waged by emerging Turkey against the Western, particularly Greek, forces which were attempting to invade Asia Minor. She used to tell about the atrocities done by the invaders and about the famine. She used to tell how Turks smuggled bread into the camp where Greek POW’s were held. They thought the Greek soldiers were “also created by God” and “should have something to eat.” As a child I wondered, “Why this generosity in times of famine?” Turks and Greeks: Neighbors in Conflict helped me to improve on my still tentative answers.

In his foreword W. Nathaniel Howell states that the authors, concerned by “psychological processes by which characterizations and ‘displacements’ persist in poisoning the atmosphere today,” have “probed beneath the ‘objective’ realities of relations between Greece and Turkey” by offering “insights into the underlying psychopolitical factors that bedevil Greek-Turkish interactions.” The authors quote Harold Saunders in their preface: “‘When old lenses no longer bring the world into focus and a traditional vocabulary does not accurately describe it, it is both realistic and prudent to grind new lenses and introduce fresh language.’” They further state that “no analysis of nations’ relations is possible without knowing the parties’ histories and the unconscious ingredients of their political cultures.”

In the first chapter Volkan and Itzkowitz indeed take on the task of introducing the elements of those “unconscious ingredients” by pointing to the importance of “mental representations” of past traumas and glories, “sometimes hundreds and hundreds years old,” and of the “mental defenses associated with

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them,” “transmitted from generation to generation.” The authors present the Eriksonian concept of “pseudo species” coined in reference to mankind’s tendency to portray his or her own group as “the human beings” and other groups as “less than human.” They bring in the mental mechanisms of integration uniting opposing images, projection attributing to other individuals and things certain parts which belong to oneself, and “shared reservoirs” “receptacles for good projections of all children representing the beginnings of a ‘we-ness’ and bad projections representing the beginnings of a shared ‘other,’ which usually is a neighboring group.”

Two of the authors’ concepts are crucial: “chosen trauma” and “chosen glory.” Chosen trauma refers to “an event that invokes in the members of a group intense feeling of having been humiliated and victimized by members of another group.” Chosen trauma may be both reason for and result of a group’s limited psychic capability to mourn. Chosen glory refers to “an event that induces in the members of a group intense feelings of having been successful or having triumphed deservedly over the members of another group.” Then they define the “ethnic tent,” or the “ethnic layer,” as a “loose covering that shelters many individuals” on top of their self-identity, the “snugly-fitting first layer of individual clothing.” Chosen traumas and chosen glories are “woven into the fabric of the tent,” and “the column that supports the tent is held [up] by the group’s leaders.” This tent is “the shared good reservoir and protects us like a mother, like a caregiver.”

Volkan and Itzkowitz, in order to explore the elements of the “ethnic tents” of Greeks and Turks, give us a concise yet sweeping account of both nations’ histories in the following chapters. Conquest of Constantinople by Turks in 1453, the Turkish War of Independence, and the Turkish military intervention in Cyprus in 1974 are identified as the most significant examples of Greek chosen traumas. The loss of the Ottoman Empire or perhaps rather the break with the past, I think emerges as the most significant chosen trauma of the Turks. It’s interesting to note that the Turks were looked upon as a minority and exploited in the Ottoman Empire, which in my opinion further complicates for them the task of dealing with their heritage particularly their

Ottoman heritage.

In one of the following chapters we are treated to an illustrative story where Dr. Volkan is stunned by a response from a Greek colleague who seems to be preoccupied, if not obsessed, with an “impending” Turkish invasion of Greece. The authors suggest that an encounter without the other person going into an obsession is usually possible if the “conflict” is ignored altogether. Perhaps I was lucky or just experienced a similar kind of “pseudoignorance” when I visited Greece in 1989 for the World Congress of Psychiatry. I was treated marvelously as a guest by colleagues in Athens and peasants on a Greek island alike. (The island, whose lights I had seen so many times from the Turkish shores in the nights of my childhood, was “dangerously” close to the Turkish coast!) The culmination of my stay in Greece was an encounter with an elderly man in the streets of Athens, who, upon realizing that I was Turkish, urged me to speak Turkish instead of English and ultimately said, “The point is that we can communicate using the same language on the street. Don’t give a damn about the politicians at the top!” I was deeply moved.

After outlining the differences between Turks and Greeks in religion, language, attitude towards the state, individualism, and looking inward or outward, Volkan and Itzkowitz emphasize common characteristics inherited from their “togetherness” which is the source of hope for communication and possibly reconciliation. They propose the labor of self-analysis instead of the deceptive convenience of configuring one’s own psyche around and against the “other.” In the process of self-analysis one can come to understand, even to love, the “other.”

Now I think my grandmother was a person resourceful enough to derive her “personality” from dynamics other than mere hatred and hostility against the “other.” She died seven years ago; I miss her dearly. A Greek friend is about to move back to Greece; I’ll miss him also. Turks and Greeks: Neighbors in Conflict helped me to understand them better.

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